


The Kima District Run

by chameleontattoos



Series: "There's no pep talk like a military pep talk." [2]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Blood, Dossier: Archangel, F/M, Gen, Major Character Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 02:42:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20828075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chameleontattoos/pseuds/chameleontattoos
Summary: Shit, hell andfuck,how has this gone so bad soquickly?One minute they were almost free and clear, and the next there was a gunship, Blue Suns rappelling in through the windows, and her best friend laid out on the floor, barely conscious and drowning in his own blood.





	The Kima District Run

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and welcome to some Dossier: Archangel content.
> 
> Tagged as graphic violence just to be safe, but it's more about the aftermath of the violence. We have fun here!!

The sound is terrible. It’s this sickening wet gasp as he fights to breathe, somewhere between coughing and blowing bubbles and choking, and it kind of makes her want to throw up a little. 

Aspen’s knees slip in blood as she assesses the situation. It’s hard to stay in place, hard to hold his gangly, clunky torso in the right position so that he can get at least _ some _ air into his lungs. She’s barely aware of her own shouting, telling Lawson to radio Joker, telling Taylor to go find Garrus’ stash of medigel, _ now, dammit, I know it’s somewhere. _ She feels the straining of her voice as she yells orders on autopilot, hoping to whatever higher power might be out there that they’re the right ones. 

“Stay with me, Garrus. I’ve got you. It’s gonna be okay.” It feels like she’s holding his throat and shoulder together through sheer force of will. More blood the colour of Garrus’ own torpedoed armour seeps around her gloves. She wants to add pressure, but she’s no field medic; she doesn’t know how much more she can press down before she crushes his already damaged trachea.

Shit, hell and _ fuck, _ how has this gone so bad so _ quickly? _ One minute they were almost free and clear, and the next there was a gunship, Blue Suns rappelling in through the windows, and her best friend laid out on the floor, barely conscious and drowning in his own blood.

Maybe this is the kind of end he wants. Pissing off a whole mess of the worst shitbags in the galaxy, taking out as many of them as he can before one of them gets lucky and brings him down. It does sound like him. Maybe he would have gotten it, if Aspen hadn’t shown up. But she’s here now, and Garrus is a tad too preoccupied to object to her interfering with his grand plans, and she’ll be damned if she doesn’t do everything she can to get him out of this dirty, dingy, burnt-out-eezo-smelling place alive. The thing is, there really is _ a lot _ of blood already all over him, and her, and the tiles, and more that her frantic hands can’t catch. Every time she repeats _ ‘it’s gonna be okay’ _ she feels like she’s lying to him a little bit more.

_ God damn it, Garrus. If you die, I’m gonna kill you. _

The side of his face that got hit is a ruin. She’s never had cause to remember how much of a turian’s head is bone, but there’s a lot of exposed _ something. _ She wishes she had three hands, because his jaw looks like it’s barely holding. His mandible is a shattered, lost cause of a mess.

Garrus tries to say something, she thinks, but the blood in his windpipe has other ideas. His eyes are wide and full of fear. The fingers of his glove scrape against the armour strapped to her thigh, hooking feebly into a crevice there as he fights to make himself heard. The tug is so weak that she barely feels it. Aspen shushes him, trying to keep her voice even. “Easy. Evac won’t be long.” She looks up at Cerberus Watchdog Number One. “Don’t make me a liar, Lawson.”

“It’ll be here.” Lawson says tightly. “Less than two minutes.”

Aspen gets the sense that Lawson thinks this is a waste of time. Frankly, she can screw off about it. They either leave Omega with Garrus still breathing, or they stay until he stops.

┈ ┈ ┈ ⋞ ⟨ ⏣ ⟩ ⋟ ┈ ┈ ┈

She’d gone into this expecting… a salarian, maybe. Small-unit tactics, unknown identity. It sounded like STG. Granted, the _ noted sniper _ thing poked a few holes in her hypothesis, seeing as how salarians tended to specialise in the _ engineer _ part of engineering—but, hey. Human Spectres in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

She put her theory to Taylor when he joined her in the cargo bay to suit up. He disagreed. “Nah. If I was a betting man, I’d say this Archangel is human. The whole vigilante thing is very _ us.” _

“You think we should be expecting Batman?” Aspen joked, giving her shotgun a last check over as she spoke. She was a ways off from enjoying his company, but the armoury officer at least had something of a sense of humour.

“These mercs sure seem to hate him enough,” Taylor snorted. “Guess that makes us the GCPD, if we’re really going in there to save his ass.”

“Still second-guessing me, Lieutenant?” 

“No, ma’am. Just not a huge fan of all the, uh… variables.”

Aspen didn’t take offense to Taylor's lack of enthusiasm, not really. She knew her plan was kind of terrible. Step one, pretend to be a merc to gain access to a crack shot sniper who wouldn’t know them from Adam. Step two, get close enough to his nest that they could convince him that they were on his side, without him taking them out first. Step three, extract him from the killzone without getting turned into Swiss cheese by the other mercs.

Terrible plan, but the best one she could come up with. In the face of that sort of _ shitshow waiting to happen, _ any complaints and-slash-or misgivings were wholly justified. 

Honestly, she would’ve _ loved _ to get through one single recruitment op that didn’t involve a high degree of likelihood of being shot at. Somehow, despite Omega being _ Omega, _ she’d thought that one might be it. But alas, instead of a simple little ‘rendezvous at Afterlife’, she got to throw together an extraction on short notice because apparently this sniper was so gifted that he’d pissed off the Blue Suns, Eclipse _ and _ Blood Pack all at the same time and now they were out to get him.

She’d be lying if she said that she wasn’t looking forward to ruining the mercs’ collective day, but Afterlife would have been so _ simple. _ And flavoured with citrus, and maybe even festooned with a little umbrella. Ah, well. 

“A sniper as good as this guy is supposed to be is like a diamond in a barrel full of pebbles. I want him on my squad.” 

“I hear you, Commander.”

There were worse times to have a fully stocked bar on your ship. She could make Archangel mix her a few cocktails in return for saving his bacon.

┈ ┈ ┈ ⋞ ⟨ ⏣ ⟩ ⋟ ┈ ┈ ┈

As Aspen and the ground team wound their way through rooms full of mercenaries, the fragments of intel they picked up painted a pretty impressive picture that did more to help Aspen make her final decision about recruiting their rogue sniper than the dossier ever could have. As annoying as it was to have to put her ass on the line for this guy, there was nothing quite like getting information direct from the source. And the sources were telling her that she needed him.

‘Course, she knew who she _ wanted _ this vigilante to be. Some of the puzzle pieces seemed to fit together; one turian C-Sec officer renowned for his skill with a rifle disappears from Citadel space, then a turian sniper with a particular taste for ruining mercenary lives shows up out of nowhere and starts busting criminal skulls on Omega? That was one hell of a coincidence. 

But—and she hated to admit it—if Cerberus, with its ridiculously deep pool of resources and info, didn’t think Archangel was Garrus, then he most probably wasn’t. 

┈ ┈ ┈ ⋞ ⟨ ⏣ ⟩ ⋟ ┈ ┈ ┈

Aspen had never been so glad to be wrong.

┈ ┈ ┈ ⋞ ⟨ ⏣ ⟩ ⋟ ┈ ┈ ┈

It takes the better part of _ Normandy’ _s night-cycle to piece Garrus back together. 

The first order of business is making sure the rest of his blood stays _ inside _ his body, and the commander insists on maintaining a vigil while he’s being stabilised. Karin puts her to work manning the medigel dispenser, if only to stop the incessant pacing.

She almost has to plant her shoe in Shepard’s behind to get her to absent herself for the rest of the procedure. A lesser woman might have thrown a tantrum. Shepard only takes a deep breath, takes a long look at the unconscious turian on the bed, and nods. 

Karin watches her through the window as she leaves. She stands in the middle of the mess hall for a moment, hands on hips. Her shoulders rise—deep breath in—and fall—heavy breath out. Then she straightens her back and begins to walk, heading towards the lift, and Karin is once again struck by how easily Commander Shepard projects confidence.

“Well, Garrus,” she sighs into the quiet, re-sterilising her gloves. “Didn’t we pick a fine one to follow.”

┈ ┈ ┈ ⋞ ⟨ ⏣ ⟩ ⋟ ┈ ┈ ┈

Garrus has a deep desire to get absolutely shitfaced which, after the day he’s had, is understandable. Unfortunately—and they check with Chakwas on this—the hard stuff is out of the question for at least the next twenty-four hours. There is absolutely no way they’re wiggling around it, since the doctor presses EDI into service as Garrus’ omnipotent breathalyser.

The easy stuff, on the other hand, does pass muster, and once all their duties are squared away Aspen is the one pouring him a glass of the least potent dextro alcohol that they currently have stocked in the bar. Nothing Garrus has ever tried before, naturally. 

It’s a small miracle that there’s anything dextro to be had at all, considering how the SR-2 _ is _ a Cerberus ship. Not that what’s here is anything worth sniffing at: five of the sort of shitty little one-eighty-mil bottles you’d find in a hotel mini-fridge. It smacks of afterthought.

Accepting the glass, Garrus takes a thoughtful sip. “Huh.”

Aspen slides onto the other stool with a glass of her own. Its contents are lurid pink, fizz something fierce, and when she swallows her first mouthful she’s delighted to discover that it burns just right as it goes down. “What’s the verdict?” she asks.

“This tastes like…” Garrus carefully tips back his head and finishes the rest, undamaged mandible waving slightly as he considers his next words. “Water-flavoured fruit juice. Mixed with more water.”

“I’m not surprised.” Aspen grins, sliding the bottle across the countertop. “It’s barely booze.”

Garrus grumbles something in turian too low for Aspen’s translator to catch as he pours himself another glass, eyeing her own drink with undisguised envy. “I feel deprived.”

“If you hadn’t tried to catch a mini-nuke with your head, you wouldn’t be.” Aspen cocks a brow, taking the opportunity to cast an eye over the dressing plastered to the side of his face. Chakwas really has done a good job. There’ll be scarring, probably, and permanent - if partial - numbness, but she’d said he should have full range of motion once he’s completely healed up and the cybernetics are fully integrated. Aspen owes her several drinks. And a service medal.

“It’s not _ my _ fault Tarak has a particular attachment to heavy artillery.” Garrus pauses, single mandible canting outward. “Had, I should say,” he amends, sounding smugly pleased.

“About that. I know it probably sounded like I was passing it all off, making jokes and all, but I…” Aspen braces both elbows on the bench, watching the bubbles in her glass rise and burst and rise and burst. She’s not sure how much she should say, but it feels like a bad time to share the fullness of the revelation she’d had while he was bleeding out. She settles for a _ very _ simplified summary. “You had me worried for a minute there.”

“Only for a minute? After all the good times we’ve had? That hurts, Shepard.” Garrus’ tone is light and teasing, but she looks at him when she goes in for another mouthful of Asari Whatsit and he’s looking right back at her like she’s speaking in some kind of code that he’s trying to crack. Like he’s testing her, like he doesn’t _ quite _ believe her. But—and Aspen is about eighty percent sure this isn’t wishful thinking—also like he _ wants _ to.

Alright, then. More simple truths, coming right up. “Maybe it was longer than a minute. You’re irreplaceable, Vakarian.”

His shoulders sag for a moment, so briefly that she almost misses it, though he maintains steady eye contact. “Irreplaceable, huh,” he repeats. 

She knows he’s not okay. Of course he isn’t. He’d been up in that nest without sleep or real food for two days. But in that brief moment, Aspen gets the feeling there’s more to it. 

She bumps his upper arm with her shoulder rather than ask about it. There’ll be time. “Absolutely.”

“Can the _ irreplaceable _ Garrus Vakarian convince his commanding officer to let him drink something with ten percent more kick?” Garrus asks, looking longingly at a bottle of levo red wine that Aspen is pretty sure he absolutely would not be able to drink without losing his insides, even without the drugs Chakwas has him on.

With absolutely impeccable timing, EDI materialises at the terminal by the door. “To ensure that your pain medication remains effective, it is recommended that your blood alcohol levels do not exceed zero point zero two percent, Agent Vakarian. Currently, your blood alcohol percentage is zero point zero zero eight. I advise caution.”

“Thanks, EDI,” Garrus intones, and Aspen has to press a closed fist to her mouth to stifle a laugh. He shoots her an amused glance before directing his attention at the AI. “That’ll be all.”

“You are welcome. Logging you out, Agent Vakarian.” The holographic sphere disappears, leaving them in silence.

“I won’t be surprised if you don’t remember,” Garrus says at length, “But before you left for that patrol, we agreed to drinks. Nothing fancy. Just something we locked in for when you got back.”

“I remember.” It’s fuzzy, the way a two year old memory tends to be, but it’s there. They were going to go to Chora’s. “Sorry if this little shindig isn’t living up to expectations.”

“Nah, it’s fine. I’ll strike it from the record. You’re two years late, one more day can’t hurt.”

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the first fic I've posted where I actually use my canon Shepard's first name. Yes, it's only the second total, but with the number of WIPs I have and my inability to only work on one at a time it was anyone's guess when it was gonna come up. For anyone interested, she's an Earthborn/Sole Survivor!!
> 
> Any numbers I used here were either pulled out of my ass or otherwise appropriated for my own nefarious purposes. I'm a writer, not an expert on blood, alcohol or maths. Or xenobiology, really. All that stuff you probably have to think about when you're trying to figure out how quickly the weakest of weak alcohol passes through the bloodstream of a metallic lizard-bird alien.
> 
> Also, I figure, like. If we in 2019 can experience Anna Karenina then the 2100s should experience the Batman comics. Because, I mean. Culture?
> 
> As always, I'll round off this end note by saying: come talk to me on [Twitter!!](https://twitter.com/solarfruit)


End file.
